Bob Kerr: We all should look at the pictures and ask questions

There is a wonderful and powerful series of photos making the rounds on the Internet. Marvin Greenberg, a frequent correspondent who believes that the human cost of war should be regularly put in front...

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By
Bob Kerr
Posted Sep. 13, 2013 @ 12:01 am

There is a wonderful and powerful series of photos making the rounds on the Internet. Marvin Greenberg, a frequent correspondent who believes that the human cost of war should be regularly put in front of us, forwarded them to me and I am grateful.

In the first pictures, we see a handsome American man and his beautiful girlfriend. We see the man in a Navy uniform, then we see him at war, looking increasingly salty. Then we see him in a hospital with tubes everywhere.

Then we see him:

Trying to hold a sipping cup to his lips without hands.

Getting a hug from his girlfriend in his hospital bed.

Working with prosthetic limbs in rehab.

At the shore, riding piggyback.

Sitting with his girlfriend on the lawn of the White House.

Marrying his girlfriend.

Sitting with his girlfriend in Adirondack chairs, watching the sunset.

There are no words with the pictures. They aren’t really needed. The pictures tell the story — a young American with a full rich life ahead of him and a beautiful woman by his side goes off to war. He goes where so few go to fight for something uncertain and increasingly removed from public concern. He is wounded and loses all or part of his four limbs.

And he comes home to be put back together and reclaim a life. And the woman is there for all of it, for the painfully small steps back and the triumph of walking again and the sunset.

It’s important to show these pictures, to show the cost of what we’re doing and could do again. Whenever there is talk of more war, as there is now, it is important to see the pictures of young lives torn apart and the hard road back. It is important to be reminded of the price paid for the folly of wars that only make things worse.

It is also good to be reminded, as we are by these pictures, that there is incredible strength and resilience and loyalty among those who go to war and that should never be taken for granted — or wasted.

The great, soothing, put-your-mind-at-ease phrase of the moment is “no boots on the ground” but that holds up only until the first incident, the first snafu that leads to something that wasn’t supposed to happen. A response is called for. Ring up the Marines.

It might happen and it might not, but to offer guarantees when lobbing missiles into the middle of complete madness is silly and insulting.

So we need to look at the pictures and think about the ripping apart of young American lives. We need to talk to people who know too well how politics and bad ideas can come together and get a lot of people killed.

These pictures Marvin Greenberg sent along are so good because they tell the whole story. They take us from young and healthy to young and all torn up and working hard to take a step. They show a man and woman coming to terms with brutal changes.

They show war as close to home as it gets.

If we look at them and pictures like them and listen to people who really can tell war stories, then maybe we’ll at least question if there’s any good reason to do it all again.